Painter
by Snowy Winter Tales
Summary: AU. It is war, made up of loss, of her, Harry and Ron, and, somehow, of his unbroken dignity and her flowing sensibleness. D/Hr.


**Painter**

He arrives, hair a faded platinum blond, matted blood stuck to his cheek. There's blood on his black robes, he's cradling his limp right arm with his left, and his mother standing next to him. He doesn't quite meet her eyes, or Harry's, or Ron's. He looks out of place in the dark hallways of Grimmauld Place, standing out, and Professor Lupin puts a hand on his shoulder.

He freezes, looking down at the hand with a kind of disdain, and then he and his mother are ushered in the kitchen, the door closing behind them with a soft _snick_.

She looks at Harry, who stands frozen next to her, his body drawn up to full-height, wired and taut. She looks at Ron, who looks resentful and thoughtful at the same time, tall and long-limbed. The three of them stand on the stairs for a while, Hermione in the middle, shoulders pressed against shoulders, soft and warm and safe.

* * *

The next time she sees him, it's in one of the rooms they haven't gotten around to cleaning yet. They're saving the cleaning supplies here, though, because it's a central point, and she was sent up to get more buckets and sponges.

He's sat at the large black piano. She hesitates in the doorway, because she has never actually been alone with him, and she doesn't want to be, very much. His fingers are rushing over the keys, with practised ease, and she wonders if he knows she's there. He seems enthralled, enraptured.

She wonders dimly if he's supposed to be using his right hand, already. Professor Lupin told her, softly, when she asked, that all the bones in his right arm had been shattered by Dark magic. The Curse had worked slowly, starting in his thumb, and had spread up and up and up until his shoulder. Professor Lupin had managed to contain it, just barely, and has been giving him potions and performing spells on him every night. If she had understood correctly, his hand had just managed to magically grow the bones back.

She felt sort of sorry for him.

"Mudblood?" he says suddenly, and she freezes in the doorway, smarting over the remark. He's stopped playing.

She doesn't respond; she thunders angrily into the room and grabs the needed supplies, slamming the door shut behind her.

* * *

Harry told them about the Horcruxes, so she's been pilfering books from the Black library. Harry told her she could take anything she wanted – the house is his, after all – but she doesn't really feel good about it. She walks into the library room – bright and deceptively sunny, because she charmed the window to match the view from her own bedroom, back home – her head busy doing equations and practising spells, notebook in hand, quill scribbling furiously.

She nearly collides with him, then, standing in front of one of the bookcases, his broad-palmed hands resting on the encyclopaedia she needs.

Her mouth sets, and she roughly shoulders him to the side, ignoring his sharp intake of breath when her bony shoulder collides with his still-healing one. He looks at her sharply, his right hand covering his shoulder gingerly.

"Don't be dramatic, Malfoy. I need this," she says primly, pulling the book off the shelf with a little effort, and then stalking over to the desk, and propping the book open against the wall. She pulls out sheets and sheets of notes, which she keeps in one of the drawers, and starts studying.

She doesn't hear him leave.

* * *

They've returned from Bath – Harry, Ron, and her, weather-wary, Polyjuice Potion fading, rain coats sticking painfully to their soaked skin – and she's sad that they haven't found another Horcrux. She'd been so sure. Harry had believed her, and he is still holding her hand now, squeezing softly.

"You're brilliant," he says, gratefully, shucking his rain coat and striding into the warmth of the kitchen, where one of the other Order members will have cooked a meal. Grimmauld Place is still Headquarters, so Hermione drew up a timetable. "It's the most effective way," she'd announced at the meeting, ignoring Harry elbowing Ron in the ribs at her side. "It's divided evenly."

The timetable is magical – new members sign in at the bottom, lost members are crossed out, and the timetable rearranges itself to meet all these shifts. She'd spend months poring over the Charms, trying to keep busy while she and Ron tried to put Harry back together after Sirius, when they couldn't yet understand what it meant when Dumbledore told Harry about the Horcruxes, and he told them, reluctantly.

Narcissa Malfoy, unsurprisingly, did not wish to be included in the list, so Hermione had copied her signature from another agreement, and had put her on there, anyway. She took great pride in the Stinging Hex tied to the parchment, and the sour face of Malfoy's mother as she came into the kitchen.

She was a wonderful cook, if Ron was to be believed, but Hermione pretended not to be hungry and gratefully helped herself to the sandwiches Harry made for her after, a knowing smile about his lips. The three of them have gotten closer, to the point where they all sleep together in the same room, needing each other's careful breathing, Ron's snores, and Harry's nightmares to put them together.

She and Ron smile at each other and follow Harry in, hanging their coats up to dry on the railing.

They walk into the kitchen to find Harry and Malfoy glaring resentfully at each other, Malfoy wearing something over his clothes. Hermione snorts when she realises it's a large blanket that's meant to be an apron.

"Malfoy," she says, because Harry's not going to say anything and she doesn't like silences. "What are you doing?"

Malfoy looks at her, resentment glowering in his eyes, and she notices that the enamel pan visible behind him is filled with onions browning in butter. Narcissa Malfoy is sitting at the table, looking up from her book. Malfoy looks at her, and then glances at his mother, who shakes her head almost imperceptively. Malfoy breathes in sharply and then answers,

"I'm making dinner. Granger," he adds, and it sounds foreign coming out of his mouth.

Hermione looks at him quizzically, sees the knife in his hands, the way Harry's standing, spoiling for a fight.

"Come on," she says to Harry and Ron, "let's clean up and get ready for dinner."

The three of them leave the kitchen, Ron laughing boisterously when Hermione tells him that it was meant to be an apron, not a diaper. She showers first, quickly, not even looking at her reflection any more, and it's only when they're sitting downstairs eating roast beef and potatoes and green beans with onion and fried pieces of bacon, that she realises she never put Malfoy's name on the timetable.

* * *

The first time they're actually meant to be together in a room is when Molly sends him up to get supplies in one of the rooms she's cleaning. She had actually been working with Harry and Ron, having volunteered them for the job because she found out something about Voldemort's mother, but Molly caught on, and split them up. She'd been wary of them going off on their own, and was endlessly trying to prevent it.

He is holding a mop and a bucket, and she nearly laughs at his resentful look upon being caught holding them.

"Don't worry. I won't get in your way," she says, grabbing a bucket and muttering the spell Molly taught her, filling it to the brim with sudsy, soapy water. She goes to work scrubbing the table and chairs stacked up against the wall. This may have been a formal dining room, once, she supposes.

After a while, she hears him go to work. She doesn't say she's surprised he knows how to clean, but she does check to see if he's done it properly when he goes to the bathroom. She's still a little surprised when she finds the floor brightly gleaming, warm hardwood floors visible up to the point where he stopped.

When she goes to get them sandwiches, three hours later, she comes back up to find him sitting behind the piano again. She knows this song, familiar in its slanting lines, reminding her of something her grandfather played when she was little. She closes her eyes and pictures her grandfather, white-haired and blue eyed, holding up his finger and looking at her softly. " _Russian, you know. Wrote amazing –_ "

"Tchaikovsky," she says out loud, suddenly.

There's a sour note as Malfoy stops playing abruptly, slamming the lid of the piano. She winces at the sound and, somewhere, she hears her grandfather warn her not to ever do that to a piano.

He ignores her, and the sandwiches she brought, for the rest of the day.

* * *

She, Harry and Ron return from a trip to Manchester, grinning widely, shoulders pressed together warmly. They've found one – a Horcrux. It was near a witch's house, a locket of pure gold, with an engraved 'S' in it. For Slytherin, Hermione had explained, unnecessarily, and Harry's bright green eyes had caught hers, and then Ron's, and the three of them had laughed together, Apparating back home dirty and muddy and victorious, finally.

"It's my turn to cook today," Hermione announces hastily, suddenly remembering, and after a quick shower, crashes into Malfoy on the landing. She has her hand on the doorknob of their bedroom, Harry in the middle of changing after his shower and Ron just on his way in there, and she sees Malfoy glance at her, at them, at the three mattresses lying together on the floor.

His eyebrows disappear into his hair. "Must be convenient, Granger," he remarks, the first time he's spoken to her since she overheard him playing the piano. "Tell me, do you switch between them or just finish them both at the same time?"

She flinches but otherwise ignores him, striding past him with her nose in the air and marching down to the kitchen.

She may have not made enough, so that when he appears in the kitchen for dinner an hour later, there's nothing left. She doesn't apologise.

* * *

The Death Eater attack, when it comes, is surprising. They lose good people that night, including Moody, and it's terrifying. All of a sudden, it isn't small victories, finding Horcruxes. It is war and loss and blurry, salty tears.

That night, the three of them sleep together on one mattress, her in the middle, Harry on her left and Ron on her right, muddled together in a tangle of limbs.

* * *

They don't know how to destroy the Horcrux. She has looked and searched in the library; they have tried spells, fire, and even – which was Ron's suggestion – throwing it over the railing of the first floor. It doesn't shatter or even crack when it reaches the first floor, much to their surprise.

They've taken to wearing the necklace in turns, afraid of leaving it around the house for too long. She's holding the necklace up to Harry and Ron, fiddling with it idly while they talk.

They don't hear him come in.

He spots the necklace dangling from her neck and literally stops in his tracks, then strides up to her and tugs at the cord, pulling her close to his face. There's a split-second in which nothing happens; she's just suspended, looking into stormy grey eyes that seem otherworldly so up close.

" _What_ are you doing with _that_?" he demands, voice rough and low, and she looks at him and then catches Harry's eyes, glittering. Ron tugs Malfoy's hand loose from her neck, and she hastily stuffs the necklace underneath her robes, hiding it from sight.

"Piss off, Malfoy," Ron says, pushing him roughly out of the way and the three of them walk out of the room, Hermione's heart stuttering in her chest in dread and anticipation.

"How does he know what it is?" Harry mutters to her, grabbing her fingers and squeezing. A tiny moment of comfort and she finds herself leaning into it, gratefully.

"Probably has a painting of Salazar Slytherin hanging in his room or something," Ron mutters, sourly, a warm hand on her shoulder. Harry and she both laugh, but they sober quickly.

"Just means we have to destroy it sooner," she says, softly.

* * *

Ron shakes her awake that night. Next to her, Harry is already sitting up, his hair sticking up at odd angles.

"I know how to destroy it," Ron says in a rush, the words stumbling out. She stares at him, bleary-eyed but wide awake.

"Sword. Gryffindor's Sword. Goblin-made," he says, and she feels cold and shivery.

"Ron, it's at _Hogwarts_ ," she says, breathlessly. Harry blinks for a moment, thoughtfully.

"McGonagall," Harry says, after that, and she looks between them, smiling fondly.

Harry's Patronus, magnificently staggering in its size, zooms off within the hour. The next day, at breakfast, McGonagall brings them the sword, her face wary, but they don't answer her questions.

* * *

She Apparates them into the Forest of Dean, because she recognises it as a safe space, somewhere she had come, once, with her parents. Harry takes off the locket, puts it on the ground. She suddenly feels nauseated, sick.

"You do it," Harry tells Ron, and she still remembers the blue eyes in the shattering glass, the smoke, and the blast of shattered soul fluttering all around them.

When they come back, they find out that one of their own – Ted Tonks – has been killed in a Death Eater raid. The three of them look at each other, uncomprehending.

That night, she sleeps tucked into Harry's collarbone, Ron's arm on her stomach.

* * *

She wakes early the next morning, around four, wearing one of Ron's old shirts, faded and patched at the elbows. She sneaks out of the room and goes upstairs, sitting on the piano stool and brushing her fingers over the rows of flawless keys. She feels dark, her fingers trembling. She tries to remember the song her grandfather always played when she came to him, upset.

 _Beethoven helps_ , he would tell her soothingly.

She moves her fingers over the keys; soft, careful. She tries to remember the notes, but finds herself grasping at straws, playing the first notes over and over until they become toneless. She sucks in a breath when elegant fingers lean over her arms and play, softly, the Moonlight Sonata.

When his fingers move into the third movement, powerful and loud, she doesn't know why she's crying, transported easily to that moment she had to say goodbye to her grandfather at the hospital, his body so incredibly cold. She feels that moment, her breaths coming out in shaky, stuttery gasps, wondering why sudden memories hurt so much more than conscious ones.

Malfoy finishes playing the piece, and just stands, his chest pressed warmly against her back. She feels comforted, lulled in a way Harry and Ron had somehow never managed to achieve when she told them about her grandfather.

When she faces him, with some difficulty, he meets her eyes, removing his arms from where they had been covering hers.

"Breakfast," she says, decisively, and he only nods.

* * *

They sit at the breakfast table, the two of them.

She doesn't really know what to say, just cradles her mug of tea and hopes that this moment that they've shared – which she's sure would have _never_ happened if it wasn't for this blasted war – will fade away noiselessly, like a radio being softly turned down.

She's made porridge, not feeling up to doing much else, but finds that the smell makes her sick, and he takes over. He is quiet and does things with an unbroken kind of dignity. She feels a little odd-shaped next to him, like she isn't meant to be. She also doesn't know why she keeps thinking of her grandfather, and the lullaby he always hummed for her before she went to bed.

"Who taught you how to play?" she ventures eventually.

"My grandfather," he responds, and she snaps her head up, eyes wide.

Malfoy meets her eyes, almost softly, and she's suddenly acutely aware of his body, of the fact that he's incredibly tall and has broad shoulders. His lashes are sooty black, casting shadows against his cheek.

"Thanks," she says, suddenly standing up, because this moment needs to end before it feathers out, like watercolour paint on a page, turning into a memory instead of a snapshot.

She leaves him sitting in the kitchen, alone.

* * *

He finds her in the library, later that day.

"Granger," he intones, and she pauses and stops writing. "Your locket," he adds, and she turns to face him, her face dangerous.

"Slytherin's locket," he continues, ignoring the look on her face. "It's invaluable. It was meant to be somewhere safe. Did you steal it?"

She turns back to her reading, resolutely ignoring him.

"Look," he says, in a low voice, coming closer to her desk. "It's dangerous. Just return it from where you found it."

It is a request, not a demand.

She snorts, but otherwise doesn't respond.

He sighs, annoyed, and leaves her sitting there, staring at carefully curled words on the pages, writings of ages ago.

* * *

"So," intones Harry, lazily, one night, as the three of them lay on their respective mattresses. "A locket belonging to Slytherin; a ring belonging to Slytherin; a diary belonging to Voldemort. I don't see a pattern."

"Things he cares about, maybe?" Hermione thinks out loud. "He cared about being a Slytherin, about blood purity. He wanted to record his thoughts and cleverness in a diary, so that makes sense."

"And the diary came from Malfoy's dad, right?" says Ron.

"Yeah," Harry responds.

And then, "Maybe," Harry says, suddenly, looking eagerly at both of them, the moonlight casting shadows on his face. "Maybe he gave things to his other Death Eaters?"

"I doubt that," Hermione counters.

"Just his most trusted ones. It would make sense," Harry stubbornly insists.

* * *

"You've gone utterly insane," Ron says, looking blankly at Harry. "Break into Gringotts? And say what to the Death Eaters there? Sorry, just coming in to steal a bit of Voldemort's soul?"

"Yes," says Harry.

Hermione is staring wordlessly between the two.

"It might – it might work, if we can disguise ourselves as Death Eaters," she says, eventually.

"Not you too, Hermione," Ron groans, but Harry looks at her brightly.

"Problem is," she interjects, before he gets too enthusiastic, "we don't know where they are."

* * *

She finds him at the piano, unsurprisingly, playing a piece that reminds her of summer and ice cream, of Cornwall, the water rushing into white cliffs and sandy beaches. His fingers move over the keys flawlessly, endlessly, quickly, with a quiet sort of grace.

"Malfoy," she asks, carefully. He doesn't respond, and she walks towards the piano. She notices, consciously, for the first time, that he plays everything from memory. It's slightly, terrifyingly brilliant.

"I need your help," she says, standing next to him.

He glances up at her, unimpressed, and continues playing.

"I need to know where the Death Eaters are," she says, Gryffindor-tactfulness at its fullest.

Malfoy doesn't stop playing, only shakes his head.

She stands there until he finishes the piece, but he merely effortlessly launches into another piano sonata and another after that, ignoring her completely.

She feels her blood boil. _Insufferable, horrible prat_ , she thinks, putting her hand on his right hand.

"Will you stop playing your bloody Mozart and tell me?" she demands. He meets her eyes, wordlessly turning his wrist and carefully folds the shirt of his left arm down, sticking it out to her. There, against his alarmingly pale skin, is a skull with a snake coming out of it. She draws in a shuddery breath; he merely folds his shirt over it again.

"Trust me, Granger," he says, continuing to play, "if I'd known where they were, I wouldn't be here playing Mozart."

* * *

They tell the rest of the Order they need to know where the Death Eaters are hiding, and they want everyone to keep a look out.

"Right," says Professor Lupin, rubbing his forehead warily. "Because that's not dangerous at all, you realise."

"Not on my life," Molly says, dangerously.

"We don't have a choice," Harry responds eventually, meeting her worried gaze. "We need to do this."

* * *

After months and months of waiting, of weeks blurring into meetings, strategies, spells they can use, spells they _should_ use, they pick a day, because the location had been discovered. They would need to go in, steal a hair of every Death Eater present – "Easy," Ron says, grinning, "Just bring scissors" – and get out. Then they would have to Apparate directly into Gringotts, take Polyjuice Potion, and demand to be seen to their vaults. And all this, preferably, Harry adds, without dying. She finds that she can't think, suddenly, and goes upstairs, locking herself in the piano room.

He had been in there, she only realises, as she steps into the room and lights it with a wave of her wand, only to find him, looking startled at the light. He meets her eyes, first in question, and then his mask falls perfectly back into place.

She hasn't spoken to him in a very long time.

"I – I need –" she begins, not knowing how that is going to finish. He seems to understand, however, and sits next to her on the piano stool.

He plays her _Für Elise,_ slower than she remembers, almost hauntingly soft in the quiet room. She's quiet, feeling the warmth of his now fully-healed shoulder against her own.

"I –" she says, very softly, her voice cracking in the middle, "I might – I might not come back. We might not come back."

Saying it out loud scares her, and in the urgency of the lower notes, the uplift as the piece moves back to the beginning notes, she feels a panic, rushing out, consuming her. This is so very, very real all of a sudden. So very close. She suddenly remembers the coldness of her grandfather's hands, the look of quiet aching on his face.

He looks at her sharply, and she can only meet his gaze, no longer sensible but just so very scared. He searches her eyes, then suddenly leans in, closer and closer, until he's kissing her, warmly, and she feels her cheeks heat up.

"Gryffindors," he mutters when he pulls back, like an insult, and he spells the door shut again behind him.

She somehow hears the notes of _Für Elise_ echoing in her mind as she goes to sleep, curled up against Ron's back.

* * *

Somehow, they're successful.

They manage to break into the Death Eater hold, finding only a handful there. They release the Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder they'd gotten from Fred and George, snatching out hairs right and left. Somehow, in the confusion, Harry manages to disarm Bellatrix and catch her wand. As soon as they can, they flee the building, Apparating near the Leaky Cauldron.

Harry's guess had been that Bellatrix's vault is the most likely to hide a Horcrux, and when they go into Gringotts, Hermione is disguised as Bellatrix (much to her consternation). They present her wand for inspection. Harry whispers an Imperius Curse, and they are led to the vault.

Getting out of Gringotts proves nigh impossible.

She really doesn't like the dragon part very much, she thinks, keeping her eyes firmly clenched shut, as they fly out of the building, over London, and finally slide off its back when they reach an ocean. Harry lets Hermione destroy the cup, which she stabs through neatly with the sword.

Hermione Apparates them back to Grimmauld Place, treating their burn marks with care. Her arm is covered with imprints of golden coins and cup handles, and she flinches when it collides, hard, with a cupboard door Molly carelessly flings open.

That night, Harry dreams of torture, of spilled blood, of curses made of green. Ron holds him, Hermione makes him tea, and the three of them sit together on the sofa, warm and comfortable under a blanket Harry conjures out of thin air. Ron's left ear is bleeding profusely, wetting their blanket with spurts of blood, and somehow it's the most hilarious thing and they can't stop laughing.

* * *

"Hufflepuff, Slytherin," says Hermione, her nose buried in a book the next day. "Gryffindor had nothing except the sword. Rowena Ravenclaw had a diadem, it says here," she suddenly intones, lifting her eyes up to meet Ron's.

"What?" Harry askes, and she shakes her head.

"It's been lost for ages, Harry," she says.

"Someone at Hogwarts must know," he says, and sends his Patronus off to McGonagall, who Apparates sharply in their midst about twenty minutes later.

"What is it?" she says, seemingly distracted.

"Are you all right, Professor?" Harry asks, and she meets his gaze with slightly accusing eyes.

"They're attacking Hogwarts."

Harry stands up. " _What_? Since when?"

"A day? Two days?" McGonagall says, her voice wary. "I'm not really sure anymore."

"We need to go," says Harry, then, to Ron and Hermione.

"What about the diadem?" says Hermione, feeling panic rising in her throat.

"What?" says Harry, distracted, and then Ron takes it upon himself to ask McGonagall about the diadem.

"I don't know," she says irritably. "It's been lost for ages, Weasley."

"Doesn't anyone know where it is?" Hermione asks, standing up as well.

"Maybe," Professor McGonagall says thoughtfully, "maybe The Grey Lady? She's the ghost of Ravenclaw house."

Later that night, after dinner, Harry tells the Order they need to go. The faces that meet his are solemn, wary, scared.

* * *

Malfoy finds her in the library, staring out of the window at the large, majestic oak that spans across the entire length of her parents' garden. She looks at him, and he shakes his head and takes her hand, leading her up the stairs, into the piano room.

He plays her Chopin, one of the ballads that start off sounding like a hauntingly soft winter's day in Paris, with her walking along the Seine, her grandfather's hand clasped in hers, her soft peach coat warm against the cold. Then it picks up speed, and all of a sudden, with his fingers racing over the keys, she has her eyes closed, feeling Paris blur into wintry cold all around her.

* * *

Harry destroys the diadem. Neville kills Nagini. There's a terrifying, heart-stopping moment where she thinks Harry is dead, but he isn't, and then Voldemort is defeated, and the Order pulls through mostly in-tact, and as long as she pretends not to hear Lavender's bones break, she would be okay.

* * *

The celebrations go on well into the night, and it's only when she spots a flash of Luna's silvery blonde hair, that she thinks of him. She Apparates back to Grimmauld Place, and finds Malfoy behind the piano, playing a piece she recognises vaguely as a piano concerto by Brahms. He doesn't stop playing when she sits down next to him, his fingers moving over the keys softly, seemingly of their own accord, while he looks up at her.

She smiles. "We won."

"Naturally," he huffs, in response, but he is smiling, and she doesn't know what to say to that, so she leans forward and kisses him.

* * *

 **Author's Note** : Piano music is something I grew up around, and it's so infused with memories and people and places for me. I imagine it's much the same for Hermione.

The piano pieces mentioned are:

\- Camille Saint-Saëns – 6 Études, Op. 52; Draco is halfway through playing "Prélude et fugue en Fa mineur".  
\- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Rose Adagio (from Sleeping Beauty, arranged for the piano by Sergei Rachmaninoff); it's for four hands, originally.  
\- Ludwig von Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor "Quasi una fantasia", Op. 27, No. 2 (Moonlight Sonata).  
\- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Piano Sonata No. 5 in G major, K. 283.  
\- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Piano Sonata No. 6 in D major, K. 284.  
\- Ludwig von Beethoven – Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor (Für Elise).  
\- Frédéric François Chopin - Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 23.  
\- Johannes Brahms - Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor.


End file.
